With Joan La Barbara, Loren Connors, Alan Licht, Till by Turning, Alex Waterman, Barbara Epler, James Hoff, Kenneth Goldsmith, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang responding to and reading the work of Joseph Cornell, Franz Kafka, Morton Feldman, Stefan Thermerson, Leonora Carrington, Unica Zurn and John Cage.
Exact Change publishes books of experimental literature with an emphasis on Surrealism, Dada, Pataphysics, and other nineteenth and twentieth century avant-garde art movements.
The press was founded in 1989 by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, known outside publishing as musicians from the bands Damon & Naomi, and Galaxie 500.
Exact Change authors include Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud, John Cage, Leonora Carrington, Giorgio de Chirico, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí, Morton Feldman, Alice James, Alfred Jarry, Franz Kafka, Lautréamont, Chris Marker, Gérard de Nerval, Fernando Pessoa, Raymond Roussel, Philippe Soupault, Gertrude Stein, Stefan Themerson, Denton Welch, and Unica Zürn.
Many Exact Change titles were originally published by larger houses, especially in the 1960s, but had more recently been left out of print; some were previously published in the U.K. but not in North America; others are new publications initiated by Exact Change. But in all cases these are books that we believe should be kept available always. We think of our list as a looking-glass version of the Penguin Classics or the Library of America, drawn from works that are equally important but have in general been neglected in the U.S.
Exact Change books are distributed to the trade by D.A.P., and direct via the website www.exactchange.com.
Joan La Barbara’s career as a composer/performer/soundartist explores the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument expanding traditional boundaries in developing a unique vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques: multiphonics, circular singing, ululation and glottal clicks that have become her “signature sounds”. Creating works for multiple voices, chamber ensembles, music theater, orchestra and interactive technology, her awards in the U.S. and Europe include the 2008 Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center; 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition; DAAD Artist-in-Residency in Berlin and 7 National Endowment for the Arts fellowships: Music Composition, Opera/Music Theatre, Inter-Arts, Recording (2), Solo Recitalist and Visual Arts; ISCM International Jury Award; Akustische International Competition Award; Aaron Copland Fund for Music; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Collaboration Award of NY Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts and Media; Meet The Composer and ASCAP Awards. Numerous commissions for concert, theatre and radioworks, including: “in the dreamtime” and “Klangbild Köln” for WestDeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne; “Dragons on the Wall”, a music score commissioned by Mary Flagler Cary Trust and “Calligraphy II/Shadows” for voice and Chinese instruments, both for Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company; choral work “to hear the wind roar” for Gregg Smith Singers, I Cantori and the Center for Contemporary Arts/Santa Fe,; “Events in the Elsewhere” from “The Misfortune of the Immortals”, funded by Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace; “Awakenings” for chamber ensemble, from the University of Iowa Center for New Music; “l’albero dalle foglie azzurre” (tree of blue leaves) for solo oboe and tape, commissioned by The Saint Louis Symphony, and “A Trail of Indeterminate Light” for cellist who sings. “73 Poems”, her collaborative work with text artist Kenneth Goldsmith, was included in “The American Century Part II: SoundWorks” at The Whitney Museum of American Art. “Messa di Voce”, an interactive media work, in collaboration with Jaap Blonk, Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman, premiered at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria on September 7, 2003 and was awarded Honorary Mention in the 2004 Prix Ars Electronica. Live Music for Dance commissions include “Landscape over Zero” (2004-05 for Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company), “Fleeting Thoughts” (2005-06 for Jane Comfort & Company), and “Desert Myths/Isle of Dunes”(premiered at NJPAC April 29, 2006 featuring Ne(x)tworks and Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company). “Atmos” for flute and sonic atmosphere, commissioned by Meet The Composer/NYSFM, premiered March 2008 at Symphony Space, performed by Margaret Lancaster; recording will be released on New World Records in 2009. In 2007-08, La Barbara received a NYSCA Music Composition award to compose a new spoken word opera, “An American Rendition”, in collaboration with choreographer/theater artist Jane Comfort, which premiered September 2008 at Duke Theatre, NYC. La Barbara is currently composing a new opera. Joan La Barbara will be responding to Joseph Cornell’s Dreams.
Guitarist Loren Connors was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1949. Best known as a composer and improviser, Connors has issued over 50 guitar records on his own imprints (Daggett, St. Joan, Black Label) since the late 1970s and over two dozen on other labels across the globe. He has recorded under the names Guitar Roberts, Loren Mattei, Loren MazzaCane Connors and other variations. Connors’ singular adaptation of the blues is a distinct personal vision combining the Delta bottleneck sound and the ancestral blues voice (appearing as distortion, baying hounds or multi-tracked guitar), with hauntingly unexpected sounds. Outside of Connors’ three decades of solo work, he has collaborated with Suzanne Langille, Jim O’Rourke, Darin Gray, Alan Licht, Christina Carter, Keiji Haino, San Agustin, Jandek and many others, as well as leading the group Haunted House. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. Loren Connors will be responding to Franz Kafka’s Blue Octave Notebook.
Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable whoʼs who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronica wizards (Fennesz, Jim OʼRourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (John Zorn, Rhys Chatham). Licht is also renown in the indie rock scene as a bandleader (Run On, Love Child) and supporting player to cult legends like Tom Verlaine, Arthur Lee, Arto Lindsay, and Jandek. He has released five albums of compositions for tape and solo guitar, and his sound and video installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. Licht has collaborated on film and video performances with Charles Atlas and Andrew Lampert. He has written extensively about the arts for the WIRE, Modern Painters, Art Review, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Premiere, Purple, Village Voice, New York Sun, Time Out New York, and other publications. His book, Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media, the first extensive survey of the genre in English, was published by Rizzoli in fall 2007. Alan Licht will be responding to Album Exact Change.
Alex Waterman is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. In New York he performs with the Either/Or Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians such as Robert Ashley, Richard Barrett, Helmut Lachenmann, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Elliott Sharp, Ned Rothenberg, Gerry Hemingway, David Watson, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Michael Finnissy. He has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Magpie Music and Dance Company. Waterman has made music for numerous European ballet and modern dance companies including Freiburg Ballett/Pretty Ugly, Scapino Ballet, Nederland Dans Theater III, and others. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His duo projects with the dancer Michael Schumacher have toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, the Opera of Monaco and most recently in all 5 boroughs of New York in a Joyce Theater production in association with the City Parks Foundation in July of 2008. In 2007 Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agapê (June 2-July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (September 7-October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in Chelsea. Alex is presently working on his PhD in musicology at NYU as well as writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and writer Will Holder. Alex participated in Dexter Sinister’s residency at the Armory for the 2008 Whitney Biennial writing a new work based upon Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Alex Waterman and Beatrice Gibson’s film, A Necessary Music, narrated by Robert Ashley and with original music by Waterman, premiered at the Whitney Museum ISP show and will be shown in galleries and museums in the US and Europe this fall. Alex Waterman will be responding to Stephan Themerson’s Cardinal Polatuo.
Till by Turning is the collective effort of Amy Cimini, Erica Dicker, Emily Manzo Sarah Biber, and Katherine Young. Working as performers, educators, improvisers, scholars, composers, and songwriters — Till by Turning performs new chamber music by established and emerging artists and develops creative educational programs. Til by Turning will be responding to Morton Feldman’s Give my Regards to Eighth Street.
Barbara Epler grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and she started working at New Directions in 1984, after graduating from college. She became the Editor-in-Chief in 1996, a Director in 2000, and in 2009 the Publisher. Still independent, New Directions was started in 1936 by James Laughlin, and was recently described by Richard Eder in The New York Times as “long struggling and long astonishing” (though she sometimes remembers that as “long suffering…”). Laughlin was the first in the USA to publish Nabokov, Borges, Lorca, Montale, Celine, Dylan Thomas, Neruda, Mishima, Tennessee Williams, Sartre and many other now classic world authors; he also built a poetry list around the then avant-garde poets Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Paz, Oppen, Olson, and Duncan, and continued with Creeley, Levertov, Snyder, Ferlinghetti, and Corso, who all embody an experimental tradition which is carried on these days by Michael Palmer, Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Forrest Gander, Kamau Brathwaite, and many others. Laughlin accepted Pound’s notion that truly new writing could take 20 years to catch on, which allows for a great deal of editorial latitude, and Epler focuses on finding new fiction, and New Directions has been lucky to be the first American publisher of new great writers like W.G. Sebald, Roberto Bolano, Laszlo Krasznahorkhai, Cesar Aira, and Victor Pelevin. She has also been a contributing editor for Grand Street magazine and a judge for the PEN/Nelson Algren Fiction Award, the N.Y.U. Emerging Writers Award, and the PEN Translation Fund Awards. Barbara Epler will be reading from Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet.
Kenneth Goldsmith’s writing has been called “some of the most exhaustive and beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry” by Publishers Weekly. Goldsmith is the author of ten books of poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb (ubu.com), and the editor of I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, which was the basis for an opera, “Trans-Warhol,” that premiered in Geneva in March of 2007. An hour-long documentary on his work, “sucking on words: Kenneth Goldsmith” premiered at the British Library in 2007. Kenneth Goldsmith is the host of a weekly radio show on New York City’s WFMU. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania, where he is a senior editor of PennSound, an online poetry archive. He has been awarded the The Anschutz Distinguished Fellow Professorship in American Studies at Princeton University for 2009-10 and received the Qwartz Electronic Music Award in Paris in 2009. A book of critical essays, “Uncreative Writing,” is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Kenneth Goldsmith will be reading selections of John Cage’s Compositions in Retrospect.
James Hoff is an artist living in New York City. He is the co-founder and editor of Primary Information, a non-profit publisher devoted to printing artists’ books and multiples by artists both young and old. He was the co-editor of 0 To 9: The Complete Magazine 1967 - 1969 (Ugly Duckling Presse) and the editor of Aram Saroyan’s Complete Minimal Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse), winner of the William Carlos Williams Book of the Year Award. With Primary Information he has edited publications and multiples by John Cage, the Art Workers’ Coalition, DISBAND, Robert Filliou, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Dieter Roth, Seth Siegelaub, and Emmett Williams, among many others. He is the recent author of Topten (No Input Books) and co-author of Endless Nameless (No Input Books). Primary Information was formed in 2006 by Miriam Katzeff and James Hoff to foster intergenerational dialogue through the publication of artists’ books and writing by artists—emerging, mid-career, and established. Our period of focus is from the early sixties to the present, with an emphasis on the conceptual practice begun in the mid Sixties and the strategy of using publications as an extension of this practice. Primary Information has recently released a CD anthologizing the late 70s/early 80s feminist music and performance collective DISBAND. Upcoming publications include an anthology of Dan Graham’s writings on music, a facsimile edition of Avalanche Magazine, and source book/anthology of the feminist magazine Eau de Cologne. For more information, please see www.primaryinformation.org. James Hoff will be reading from Unica Zurn’s Dark Spring.